> "It has always puzzled me a little bit that shooting is a core mechanic in a majority of video games. Does this serve any purpose?

My personal theory is that violent video games (and films and other media) are encouraged in highly militarised societies to desensitise their populations to violence - if you normalise it so it all seems like a game or other form of entertainment, you get a lot less internal opposition when you go about killing real people in other countries.